Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Fritz Lang | Metropolis

Let us agree
immediately that the plot of Lang’s great film is absolutely ridiculous, akin
at times to his “The Spiders,” a combination of serial adventure stories,
exotic mysteries, and science fiction. Young Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), son to
the wealthy “master of the city” John Fredersen (Alfred Abel), dares to venture
out of the “pleasure garden” after encountering “the good Maria” (Brigitte
Helm) as she tours worker’s children through the gardens (we never quite know
whether her visit is a kind of protest or a planned event). Changing clothes
and lives with a downtrodden worker, Georgy (Edwin Biswanger) goes to work in
the City of the Workers, like the others, daily worked almost to death as they
keep the wealthy above ground world bathed in lights and electrical power.

After his workshift—during which he has
found a strange, folded map in Georgy’s work clothes—Freder follows other
workers into the underground tunnels lying below the worker’s city for a
clandestine meeting led, quite surprisingly, by Maria, who speaks to the
workers of the coming of a kind of messiah, the Mediator, who will help them to
negotiate with the leaders such as Fredersen for a better life. Moved, by her
words, Freder himself perceives that he is in a position to be such a mediator,
and approaches Maria with the news.

Meanwhile, through the maneuvers of the
mad scientist and former collaborator Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), Fredersen
has himself been observing the meeting, troubled by what he observes and
horrified by the presence there of his own son.

Rotwang, we discover, was also in love
with Fredersen’s wife, who died years earlier, and has created a robot to bring
her back to life. Observing the beautiful Maria at the meeting, he determines
to use her face and body to bring his robot into being, presumably, upon Fredersen’s
instructions, as an evil Frankensteinian force to help the workers in their own
self-destruction (why he would want this, resulting as it must in the loss of
power for the upper-world city, is unexplained). But Rotwang has other plans in
mind, and bids his “evil Maria” to obey only him.

Freder who accidentally has heard Maria’s
cries from the house in which Rotwang has captured her, attempts to enter, but
is barred, until, one by one, doors open and close behind him, entrapping him
in the same house while Maria’s visage is morphed onto the robot’s frame.

There are other subplots, Freder’s being
followed by The Thin Man, ordered by Fredersen to keep watch over his son,
Georgy’s adventure in the licentious nightclub Yoshiwara, and numerous other
plot twists that keep the action moving, but hardly matter in the larger scheme
of things. What is at center is the now “evil Maria’s” ability to convince the
workers to attack and destroy the machines, which are now seen as gigantean
Molochs, idolatrous gods to which the workers must daily bow and by which they
are destroyed.

The most exciting scene of the film,
certainly, is the worker’s entry into the machine plants and their destruction
of the power systems. What they do not comprehend, as they attempt, finally, to
destroy the very “Heart Machine,” the machine that ultimately controls all the
others, is that in doing so they inadvertently have flooded their own houses,
where their children lay in bed. The loyal worker Josaphat tries,
unsuccessfully to tell them while Maria works them into a greater and greater
frenzy.

Meanwhile, the good Maria has escaped,
miraculously unscathed, Rotwang’s chambers and made her way, with Freder, to
the worker’s city. Observing what has occurred, she rings the town bells to
warn the children, who come rushing out of their homes at the very moment that
the streets are filling with water. Freder and Georgy have followed the workers
to explain what is happening, but are trapped, temporarily, in the remnants of
the destruction. Finally escaping, they join Maria hovering in the town square
with the children, and order them to attempt to escape upwards into the world
above. Doors are bolted and blocked, and for a while it appears all will drown,
until Freder is finally able to break through, leading the children, along with
Maria to safety in the posh halls of the executives’ club. In the transferal,
however, Freder and Maria become separated.

The “evil” Maria, who has already
enchanted the wealthy patrons of Yoshiwara, returns to Metropolis, with the
workers, who have finally discerned what has happened and despair for the lives
of their children, chasing her with the intent of her destruction. When they
finally encounter her in the midst of a celebratory group of night clubbers
determined to dance their way into oblivion, they create a pyre upon which they
tie her, setting it afire. Freder, believing it is the “good” Maria tries to
convince them to cease, without success, and as the flames surround her, all
suddenly perceive that behind the outward visage, she is only a metal
construction.

The “good” Maria, however, has been
cornered outside the cathedral by Rotwang, who believing she is “his” Maria is
determined to now consummate the sex for which has created her, and takes her
to the towers of the church. Perceiving what has occurred, Freder goes on the
chase, with the masses behind him. After several battles between the two,
Freder defeats the evil genius, freeing Maria. The last scene, as they exit the
cathedral (symbolizing also their spiritual marriage) they encounter the crowd
slowing moving in a large triangle toward them, facing off against Joh,
Freder’s father. Meeting the foreman, Rot, Joh attempts to speak conciliatory
words, but cannot. The Mediator, Freder, must bring them together in a
handshake, as all realize the truth of Maria’s words: There can be no
understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as
mediator.”

If this preposterous plot had been all Metropolis had to offer, the world would
never have missed the film that, through censorship and disdain at its length,
had been cut away so much that at the end of his life, even Lang was convinced
that his art work no longer existed. While the original film ran approximately
153 minutes, the one shown in the USA, with a rewrite by playwright Channing
Pollack, ran for only 115 minutes, and later versions were winnowed down to 91
minutes (in the copy released in 1936, and archived in the Museum of Modern Art
film library. The 1984 restoration, edited by Giorgio Morderer, featured added
special effects and a pop soundtrack instead of intertitles. In 2002 Kino
returned the original score and restored previously unknown sections of the
film.

In 2005 an historian and politician found
a longer print in the National Film Archive of New Zealand, and in 2008 film
historians found an original cut of the movie in the archives of the Museo del
Cine in Buenos Aires, which, although in bad condition, added over a half an
hour to the film. Only two scenes, one in which a monk preaches and a fight between
Rotwang and Fredersen were in such bad condition that they could not be
salvaged. Today, what is called “the complete” Metropolis, reissued in 2010, consists of a restored original with
the missing links, which appear in a more scratched and grainy condition.
Indeed, one might write about the experience of moving back and forth between
the two versions as creating a sort of unintentional reverence for the work, as
if the movie itself were a sort of holy grail brought back as much as possible
into its original condition.

What one perceives, despite the banal plot
and the deteriorated, interleaved clips, however, is a thing of visual
magnificence. The most expensive film of its time (made at a cost of over five
million Reichsmarks in 1927), Lang’s work is a wonder even today, and visual
splendors have been imitated in hundreds of other films. Lang’s creation of the
city, both above and below ground, is a wonder to behold, and his scenes in
Rotwang’s laboratory as the mad scientist transforms his metallized robot into
a human being has been repeated in nearly every horror film that portrays such
scenes. Just as remarkable are Lang’s portrayals of the masses, as they slowly
march forward in what one can only describe as patterned dances, looking at times
eerily like the films we have of Holocaust prisoners on their way to the
showers.Only at the foot the Heart
Machine do they actually break into a leaping dance. So ritualistic and
overpowering are these scenes, that the Nazi rallies and, particularly, Leni
Riefensthal’s films employ crowds in a somewhat similar manner.

So taken was Joseph Goebbels with Lang’s
vision, that he offered the director the position of head of the Film Division
of the Nazi government. Lang sat impatiently through the long conversations
with Goebbels, only hoping to be able to get the bank before it closed. By the
time Goebbels was finished with him, it was too late. Lang put together a few
of his possessions and as much money has he could gather and left the country
immediately, leaving behind his wife, Thea von Harbou, the writer of Metropolis, who remained a Nazi
supporter throughout the War.

Never would Lang again be able to make
the brilliantly visual films that he had in Weimar Germany, although he did
accomplish some fine works for the Hollywood industry. Metropolis, however, remains his cinematic highpoint, even though
it is a far cruder film that his nightmarish M.